Sunday, June 14, 2009

Zeh LO Bishvilech!

First, a Hebrew lesson.

Phrase number one: גם זה לטוב pr. gam zeh l'tov. "This is also for the good". This is the phrase used by an excessively happy-clappy person to describe the bad shit that happens to someone else. Everything, EVERYTHING is a gift from G-d. Oh, your cat just peed all over your chocolate supply? And your child is on drugs? And you are up five kilo? Gam zeh le tov!

Phrase number two: זה לא בשבילך pr. zeh lo bishvilech. "This is not for you". My diet group leader's mantra. This mantra applies to any food product which you like and which you might believe should be for you, but which contains more calories per square inch than the number of coffee shops per Tel Aviv square mile (rough estimate = a lot). So really, this food is not for you.

You will nee the above phrases for this post.

On Friday, I went to the shuk. I had invited myself over to Practical Yael's house for dinner and she asked me to bring rugelach from the Marzipan bakery. The Marzipan bakery has pretty much the best rugelach in the world. In fact, its rugelach are much, much better than the rugelach than those of the bakery on the other side of the shuk, where I was injured. Had I gone to the Marzipan bakery instead of that bakery, I may have avoided the bombing altogether. But then, this blog would have never come to be. And you would have been bored. So gam ze l'tov! (See how the phrase is used? Isn't it so clever?) Besides, the bus stop itself is still by the first bakery. And I was blown up at the bus stop, and not at the bakery. So, really, the source of my rugelach did not matter. I would have been blown up either way.

But I digress.

Anyway, so I went to the shuk where I spent my time buying enough vegetables for a family of four for like, a year. If anyone ever tells you that the shuk is good for people on a budget (and they will, because people always say that), please be aware that they are lying. What happens is that you go and all of a sudden you realize that you need five butternut squash. And four eggplants. And half a dozen cucumbers. Even though when you were at home and looking at what you already had in your fridge, you did not think you needed them at all. The reason for this is because the moment you get near the shuk little shuk viruses enter your brain and eat it and turn you into some creepy zombie thing that runs around the shuk buying outrageous quantities of vegetables.

The other thing I did at the shuk was to try to stick to my diet. I did so by making extensive use of the diet group leader's mantra. Every time I passed a falafel place, a shipudia (specializes in meat skewered on an iron spit and grilled--my favorite is Sima), a bakery or any place selling prepared foods I sternly reminded myself "zeh lo bishvilech". And you know, it worked! Even when I was at the Marzipan bakery itself! Though I did notice that I was receiving a lot of strange looks. Note to self: next time, I should say this silently. And without wagging my finger in my face.

So all would be well and good, were it not for the extra rugelach. A co-worker is putting together an office event and I, like an idiot, volunteered the fact that I was going to the shuk and offered to pick up a couple kilos of rugelach and bring them to the office on Sunday. Unlike the rugelach which I bought for Practical Yael, and which are now safely ensconced at her house (or to be more accurate, safely making their way through the digestive systems of her five children), these rugelach are in my freezer. And they are taunting me. They want me to eat them. But I cannot do that. I promised the co-worker that I would bring them to the office. How bad would it look if I were to show up with 1.5 kilos of rugelach instead of two? And besides I must stick to my diet.

Suffice it to say, it has not been pretty.

For the last 36 hours I have endured periodic outbursts in which run I to the freezer, open the door, scream "zeh lo bishvilech! zeh lo bishvilech!" at the rugelach and then slam the freezer door shut. Then I run to a corner where I spend 10 minutes crouched, sobbing and poking myself in the belly.

All I can say about this is that it is a good thing that I am not married. My husband would have called the men in the white coats hours ago and had me committed hours ago. So gam zeh le tov that I am single.

Good for you! You really got yourself through that. But really, try to treat yourself to something small and within your diet. It is possible. My diet allows a 100 calorie treat every day, and it really helps. 1 row of bittersweet chocolate, or one of those 92 calorie Elite chocolate bars really work. So do Energy 100 cal granola bars that have a thin layer of chocolate on the bottom. Diet chocolate puddings are also yum.

Stop torturing yourself. Although you get good posts out of the torture, it's really unnecessary.

And i disagree with the bland food. Yummy satisfying, low cal food is much better. I just made a great soup last week:

Saute onion and leek till transluscent, add the rest of the vegetables except AM and saute till soft. Add water to cover, salt and soup mix. Bring to a boil, add chopped leaves. Cook 40 minutes. Take off the heat and blend until smooth.

It tastes like creamy potato soup. Great to have all week and shabbat.

No, dear Gila, the reason it is good that you are not married is that if you indeed had 2 kilos of such delicious stuff in the freezer you would find, on Sunday morning, that you had only 1 kilo left - because your husband had eaten the rest!! (They are sneaky that way.)

Damn, now I really miss the shuk. I'll have to make do with our over-priced organic free-range carrots and ecologically-a-little-too-friendly beets from the local farmer's market. Hippies.

Comment to RivkA:Don't want to be too nitpicky, but if you're already correcting the grammar, I'll throw in my two cents.I believe the phrase is actually "gam zo l'tovah" rather than "gam zu l'tovah", as the word "zu" is actually a synonym for "asher" (as in "am zu ga'alta").

And Gila, if you ever need any help disposing of Marzipan rugelach and I happen to be in the same city as you, I am more than willing to volunteer my services. :)

I cannot stop laughing. I am single in my upper thirties. You are pricelsess. About marzipan, a friend of mine would run leftover rugelach/cakes uner the water for a while until they were soggy enough to guaranty she would not root through the garbage for them.

New to My Shrapnel? Start at the beginning:

About Me

Message from the Bombing Victim Muppet

I am, of course, neither sad, nor heroic nor particularly victimized. What I am is an "ordinary Joe" who was seriously injured six years ago in a suicide bombing while waiting for a bus at the Machane Yehuda open air market in Jerusalem.

Ever since I learned how to write, writing has served as a sort of therapy for me. In the months and years after the bombing, I did an enormous amount of writing. What I was thinking. What I was feeling. How the world reacted to me. How my bombed-out self reacted to the world. Some of the articles were sent to friends and relatives via email lists. Many more of them just sat on my computer. I always meant to do something with them.

Of course, I never got around to it.

This year, I promised myself that I would, at last do something. And since blogging is the best way to do something without having to do all that much (no publishers, no rejections, no work apart from editing), I decided that this was the way to go.

Please comment. I am putting these out so that people will read them. Let me know that you are reading.